Here's Redskins coach Jay Gruden a month ago at the combine talking about quarterback Robert Griffin III: "We'll going into the season with Robert as the No. 1 guy, obviously. Then it's up to Robert to continue to grow and mature as a quarterback and a person. And moving forward just want to see some improvement. That's up to us as a staff to get more out of him."
Here's Gruden this week at the owner's meeting: “If we think it’s worth the risk to hit the reset button, if he’s that good of a football player, if we decide in the building that he’s that good of a football player that we think we should do that, then we should do that.”
The takeaway then and now: Griffin is the starter for the time being. And that's probably how it should be; RG3 shined as a rookie, helping the Redskins to a division title and the playoffs. But he was benched for Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy in each of the last two seasons, and if the former second-overall pick can't put it together in 2015, he'll find himself on the bench again, likely for good.
In fact, the Redskins, who have the fifth-overall pick in the 2015 draft, haven't ruled out taking a quarterback three years after trading up to land Griffin.
“We’ll see,” Gruden said about drafting another quarterback. “That has not been determined yet, obviously. We have some time to determine whether or not we want to go that direction. [Marcus Mariota] is a heck of an athlete, I’ll tell you that. And Jameis [Winston] is a heck of passer. Two very good options to have if you are in need of a quarterback and you think you want to go that direction, then they are both worth going that direction for probably.”
Ryan Clark, who spent last season with the Redskins and is now an analyst for ESPN, said earlier this month that if the team was to draft a quarterback it wouldn't go over well with the current face of the franchise.
“To hear this early that at No. 5 if Marcus Mariota is there — it has to be disheartening to RG3," Clark said at the time. "And even if they don't draft Marcus Mariota, it could create a problem in the locker room."
Meanwhile, tight end Niles Paul is optimistic that 2015 will be the year Griffin breaks out.
“I know Rob has reached out to everybody and we're all going to go on a little team trip — the offensive guys are going to go on a little team trip — to get some work in fairly soon here,” Paul said earlier this month. “…I know what Rob can do as a quarterback, I know what he brings to the table. I'm just excited to see him kind of prove all the naysayers and everybody else wrong.”
